I really hope this doesn't go to DRS. If it did it would make the gov look stupid to have forgotten to renew it (if it is so important to them to stop it falling into the wrong hands as the article attempts to persuade). They should have put the site on the .gov.uk domain in the first place, then no-one could ever re-register it. They registered a domain in the commercial sphere, where permanent ownership is not guaranteed, using a domain that in the future anyone else could own, and they stopped paying the renewal fees. I think after several years of forwarding the domain onto the .gov.uk version, and seeing that that site is established as the main one in Google for the phrase, they just decided they didn't need/ want the domain any more.
The British mainstream media have always vilified domainers. They are of course biased in general, heavily censored and they like to stir up controversy to push their crappy little half-truth stories, and that's what is going on here.They still have the Establishment mindset from pre-Internet days where the few of them tell the millions of us how it is, but they are bitter that they no longer have the position of power they used to, now that they are only a small voice in the giant online world, where we can read and publish to each other. I haven't bought a newspaper in the last 20 years, though I wondered if I might have to a few months back when toilet roll started to become scarce.
It's not true that registering a domain like this is automatically dishonest. Firstly anyone who shells out £40k on a domain clearly has a long term plan - one which they are hardly likely to jeopardise by doing anything illegal with the site. This is in stark contrast to the vast majority of scammers, who use cheap throw-away domains for their fly-by-night operations, knowing that they will be shut down soon.
In the real world, it's very common that when a business vacates their premises, a competitor comes along and starts trading from the same place. Competitors look out for places where there is an established customer base, many of whom would be happy to switch over to the them if their service levels and pricing are good enough. Why should it not be the same with domains, as long as you are not passing off?
Establishing inbound links and traffic is like a shop in the real world, for example a news agent getting well known in the local area and building up a customer base. If the owner of that news agent gives up the lease, they don't "own" all the customer base that continues going to that retail unit for evermore. They might forewarn their customers that they are moving and ask them to come to their new premises - and that's pretty much what the gov did by forwarding the old domain onto the new one for several years. But whoever takes over the shop next benefits from the ongoing traffic that has been built up.
The new owner has not done anything with the domain yet and people are acting like he has been passing off as the government. Get off his back and let him have a chance to do something with it.
